Self Actualization
by Ayezur
Summary: It isn't vandalism, it's closure.  Short, experimental, hopefully packs a punch.  VinTi flavored, but then again I wrote it so that should be obvious?


Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: I am stalled on the next multichap. In the meantime, you can has ficthing done in experimental style! YAAAAAAAAY!

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Two shadows against rotted wood and peeling paint. Glass sparkles in the moonlight and tinkles against the cracked paving-stones.

"I really don't think we should be doing this."

"I really think we should."

"Is it even legal, strictly speaking?"

"Does it matter? Hang on."

One shadow steps back and leaps, diving through the jagged window. "Ow!"

"That's what you get."

"It'll heal. C'mon." A hand reaches over the stained, sparkling glass. "Up we go. Look, I feel like this is something I have to do."

"Aren't you a little old for this sort of thing?"

"Don't talk back to your elders, whippersnapper."

"It's just, I stopped breaking in here when I was twelve."

"It didn't mean anything to you."

"And you couldn't have used the front door?"

"I should have brought Cid. He'd understand."

"No one understands you."

They slide through the ruins on whispering cat-feet, moonlight lacing through the broken roof, and nod to old ghosts in passing.

"It's kind of strange to think you were down there all that time we were crawling around, scaring ourselves silly."

"Good thing none of you got down that far."

"Why?"

"Because I would have been too old for you if I'd woken up then."

"That would… almost be sweet, in a creepy way, if we weren't on the way to trash your ex-girlfriend's laboratory."

"It isn't vandalism, it's closure."

"I thought you were eternally dedicated to her."

"Eternal dedication has its downsides. She just _left_ me there, for fuck's sake."

Her hand on his arm. "You don't have to explain yourself to me."

"…thirty damn years in that thing, except for when Veld came to say hi…"

"Wait, what?"

"My old mentor, in the Turks. He stopped by a few years before you did."

"Why didn't you leave then?"

"I was still upset."

A few giggles. "Sorry! I'm not laughing at you, honest."

"Heartless woman."

"I love you?"

"Funny way you have of showing it."

"I promise never to leave you in a basement for thirty years?"

"I suppose that's acceptable."

Old stone stairs rough and broken under their feet, stretching down into darkness and forgotten loss. A metal door hangs open, rusting off its hinges. The glass chamber is shattered and smeared with oily residue.

"Home sweet home."

A long wooden bat makes a graceful arc; metal bends and glass crunches; the entire structure creaks. Again – the cage wobbles alarmingly; a third – with all the rage of wasted years behind it – the decrepit thing falls slowly, almost gracefully, trailing dead wires gnawed by rats and mice.

"…well, that was anticlimactic."

"Don't you want to get the coffin?"

"…no. No, I chose that. This was done to me – did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

A sharp downward thrust of his hand.

"…Tifa?"

"Yes?"

"We need to run." Hands reach out and meet unthinkingly. Up the stairs and through the house, slavering, scraping claws behind them.

"I thought Reeve cleared this place out!"

"We must have missed something. Keep running."

"I wasn't planning to stop!"

A stretched eternity of running before it's safe to stop – breathing hard – they don't let go as they catch their breath

"…it's not chasing us." A quick phone call. Fifteen minutes before WRO troops arrive. No, Reeve will never find out what they were doing there.

"Next time I'm bringing Cid." The phone snaps shut. "And dynamite."

"_Vincent!_"

"Kidding. Only kidding."

Dark hair over pale skin, shadows on ivory.

"Thank you for coming with me." Cool lips against her forehead and she leans in to warm him.

"Did you think I wouldn't?"

"Maybe for a while."

A poke in the chest. "Have you attained closure? Actualized your inner child?"

"Quite. Marry me?"

"_What?_"

"You don't have to answer right away. Say in five or ten years?"

"You're a lunatic."

"Who loves you desperately."

"Gods help me."

A kiss, soft and sweet and a little like death in the shadows of a ruined past, while the moonlight holds them safe.


End file.
